Chapter 1: Secret Obsession, Hidden Screen
The silence in the reading nook was a physical thing, a thick, comfortable blanket. Louise pulled it tighter around herself, tucking her feet up onto the faded velvet cushion of the wrought-iron chair. Sunlight, fractured into jewels of sapphire and ruby by the stained-glass skylight above, pooled on the wooden floorboards. The air smelled of settled dust and the quiet, sweet decay of aging paper.
Her shift at the circulation desk had ended ten minutes ago. This was her ritual.
She tugged her headphones from the pocket of her cardigan, fingers finding her phone by touch. The library’s wi-fi was patchy back here, but she had the video downloaded. She’d watched it seventeen times since Tuesday.
The screen glowed to life. There he was, a lone figure in a costume the colour of midnight, standing in the centre of a roaring, flag-draped arena. Ilia. The Russian commentators’ voices were a frantic, rolling wave of consonants she didn’t understand, but their tone said everything. Anticipation. Awe.
He began to move.
Louise’s breath shallowed. It wasn’t dancing. It was a gathering of force, every muscle coiling with a terrible, beautiful precision. The music swelled—something classical and dramatic, all crashing cymbals—but she watched in silence, the world of the library receding to a distant hum.
He launched himself into the arc of his combination, a blur of speed and air. Then he set up for the big one. The quad axel. Four and a half rotations. No one else had ever landed it cleanly at the Games.
Her fingertips went cold. She leaned closer, as if she could somehow cushion his fall if it went wrong.
It didn’t go wrong.
He took off, a perfect knife-edge of ambition against ice. For a heartbeat, he was suspended, a sculpture of effort and flight, hair whipping back from his fierce, concentrated face. Then the rotations, so fast they were a dizzying spin of colour, and the landing, one leg snapping out, a spray of ice crystals catching the light like shattered diamonds.
A perfect landing.
A sound escaped her, a tiny, choked gasp she immediately stifled, glancing around the empty nook. Her heart hammered against her ribs. She tapped the screen, rewound ten seconds. Watched the jump again. The sheer power of him, the audacity. It made her feel small, and safe, and intensely alive. She was a still pond and he was a plummeting stone, shattering her quiet surface with impossible ripples.
“Anything good?”
The voice, male and unfamiliar, came from right behind her shoulder.
Louise jolted, fumbling the phone. It clattered onto the leather-bound copy of Paradise Lost on her lap. She whipped her head around, the headphones tugging free from one ear.
He was standing at the entrance to the nook, blocking the light from the main stacks. Not a patron she recognized. He was tall, wearing a grey track suit that should have looked sloppy but instead hugged the lean, defined lines of his shoulders and thighs. A gym bag was slung over one shoulder. His hair was the colour of wheat, damp with sweat at the temples, and his eyes were a pale, piercing blue.
She knew that face. She had just been watching it defy physics.
The world tilted. The scent of old books was suddenly overwritten by something else: clean sweat, the sharp, chemical tang of ice rink antiseptic, a faint, expensive cologne.
Ilia. In her library.
“I…” Her tongue felt heavy and useless. She couldn’t form a sentence. She could only stare, her wide eyes taking in the reality of him—the faint stubble on his jaw, the small chip in one of his front teeth she’d never noticed on screen, the sheer, overwhelming physical presence of him in this tiny, sun-dappled space.
He nodded toward her phone, where he was still frozen mid-rotation. A faint, amused smile touched his lips. “The axel?”
She managed a stiff, tiny nod, her dark hair swaying.
“Landing was a bit shaky,” he said casually, as if critiquing the weather. He took a step into the nook. The space, which had felt cozy a moment before, now felt claustrophobic. He dominated it. “The free leg on the touchdown. You see it?” He leaned forward, pointing at her screen.
Louise looked down. His finger, long and elegant, was inches from her own. She could see a white scar across his knuckle.
“Y-yes,” she whispered, though she hadn’t seen anything wrong at all. To her, it was flawless.
“You’re a fan.” It wasn’t a question. His gaze lifted from the phone and settled on her face, appraising. She felt utterly transparent, as if he could see the seventeen replays running on a loop in her mind.
“I work here,” she blurted out, as if that explained anything, as if her pale-blue librarian’s badge was a shield.
“I see.” His eyes travelled slowly around the nook, from the stained glass to the shelves of unread philosophy texts, then back to her. They lingered on her hands, still clutching the phone, then on her mouth. “It’s quiet.”
“It’s a library,” she said, then immediately regretted stating the obvious. Heat flushed her cheeks.
His smile widened, showing that chipped tooth. “Smart girl.” He dropped his gym bag on the floor with a soft thud. It landed next to her discarded flats. “I need a place to think. To get away from… all of it.” He didn’t specify what ‘all of it’ was. The media, the coaches, the noise of his own gold-medal life. He just looked at her, expecting understanding. “This seems like a good spot.”
“It’s… it’s public,” Louise managed, her voice barely audible. “Anyone can use it.”
“Good.” He took another step. Now he was close enough that she could see the individual flecks of grey in his blue irises, smell the warmth of his skin. He reached out, not for her, but for the book her phone rested upon. His fingers brushed her thigh through her thin summer dress as he lifted the heavy volume.
“Paradise Lost,” he read the spine, his accent rounding the words. He let the book fall open in his hands, its pages whispering. His eyes scanned a line, then he looked back at her. “‘The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n.’ Do you believe that?”
No one had ever asked Louise a question about Milton in the library. No one had ever looked at her the way he was looking at her now—like she was a fascinating, quiet puzzle he had all the time in the world to solve.
“I… I’m not sure,” she breathed.
“I am.” He closed the book and placed it back on her lap, his hand resting on the cover, on top of hers. His palm was warm and dry. A callus scratched her knuckle. “The mind is everything. Control it, and you control the world.” He applied the slightest pressure to her hand. “You have very serene hands. Have you ever done ballet?”
She shook her head, mute.
“A shame. You have the architecture for it.” He finally released her hand, but the impression of his touch remained, a brand. “I will be training here for the next six weeks. At the rink on Elm. I will come here to think after my sessions.”
It was a statement, not a request for permission. He was telling her the new shape of her afternoons.
“Okay,” she heard herself say.
He picked up his gym bag, his movements fluid and utterly assured. “What is your name?”
“Louise.”
“Louise.” He tested the sound of it. “A quiet name. I am Ilia.”
“I know,” she said, and another wave of heat flooded her face.
His pale eyes glittered. “Yes. You do.” He turned to leave, then paused at the archway, a silhouette again. “Save this nook for me, Louise. I dislike crowds.”
And then he was gone, his footsteps silent on the old carpet.
The nook rushed back in around her—the sunlit motes of dust, the smell of paper, the profound, waiting silence. It was all the same, and yet completely altered. The air itself seemed to vibrate with his departure.
Slowly, stiffly, Louise picked up her phone. Ilia’s image was still paused there, an eternal, solitary leap. She tapped the screen. The video played, the familiar, awe-inspiring sequence unfurling. But she couldn’t concentrate on the jumps anymore. All she could see was the expression on his face just before the music started. That look of intense, singular focus. The look he had just given her.
Her fingers were not cold anymore. They were trembling.
She watched the video once more, all the way through, but her mind wasn’t on the ice. It was on the weight of his hand on hers, the certainty in his voice, the next six weeks, and the utter, terrifying quiet of the space he had just claimed for himself. A heav’n or a hell, she didn’t yet know.
The distant ceiling fan hummed. A page rustled somewhere in the non-fiction section.
Downstairs, the front door of the library swung shut with a soft, decisive click.